


Rain

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, world study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:19:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This really is a sort of conflict that lets me try to think about the disconnects between the Holmes boys, and about the elements that let Lestrade work with Mycroft, where John and Mary seem less likely to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain

“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock snarled, sprawled in one corner of the black Jaguar that had picked him, John, Mary, and Lestrade up from the Met. “We were merely investigating a crime. You’d think Mycroft would approve.” He narrowed his eyes and scowled. “The government is entirely out of control. Infringing on privacy, turning Great Britain into a nanny state, interfering with the proper function of the Metropolitan Police.” 

“Give over,” Mary said, grinning. “I told you it wasn’t straight civilian crime. Did you listen?”

“He had his reasons, Mary,” John remonstrated. “You heard him. He laid out the entire chain of reasoning over lunch.”

“In a pub. Three pints into a full gallon.”

John made a small, grumbly sound. “It made sense.”

“Says Mr. Four Pints.”

“And you?”

“Five pints—and quite aware not one of us was fit to drive a car or evaluate a crime scene.”

“I was perfectly sober,” Sherlock said, tipping his nose up. “Compared to the two of you…”

“Not a comparative evaluation,” Lestrade said, speaking for the first time. “’Sober’ doesn’t mean, ‘least drunk person left standing.’”

“In which case you are seldom, if ever, sober,” Sherlock snapped.

“False,” Lestrade said, frowning.

“True.”

“Oh, come on, Sherlock. I don’t drink on duty, and it’s not like I live at the pub.”

“Or like you run your flat as tee-total heaven.”

“Bastard,” Lestrade grumbled. “I’m a moderate drinker. That’s all.”

“And I’m a moderate junkie.”

“Not the same thing.”

“Boys, boys, boys,” Mary said, “without blood readings on either of you it’s all just posturing in any case. Sherlock, what’s Mycroft want us in for, really?”

“He has presumed to put a block on our access to the files from the autopsy.”

John sat up, frowning. “Matter of public record, yes?”

“Apparently not.” Sherlock huffed. “No doubt one of MI6’s hits, and he’s determined to provide cover, sparing them the inevitable repercusions due a department run amok.”

Mary shook her head. “No—that doesn’t make sense. As near as I cans see he’s one of ours.”

“Friendly fire,” Sherlock said, darkly, and John chimed in behind him, adding, “Friendly fire isn’t.”

Mary shook her head again. “No, no. It was poisoning. It’s one thing to hit one of our own by accident in the heat of action. But poison? That’s hardly a high-speed, adrenaline-filled moment in the cross-fire, is it?”

The Jaguar pulled up outside the SIS building on the southern shore of the Thames. It looked like a castle made of oddly mystic Legos—pale, pale greens and misty oatmeal whites. The four passengers exited the car and headed for the lobby, still arguing.

Above, in his office high over the plaza below, Mycroft looked down from the window, watching them advance. “I see you were able to convince him to come,” he said to his aide.

She nodded.

“What lever did you have to use this time?”

“I suggested you might be rather tired of managing his trust fund, and turn it over to his own care and maintenance.”

“Can’t use that often. Eventually it would occur to him to have Dr. Watson or Mrs. Watson take over. Or one of his string of grateful previous clients. I dare say young Sebastian, for example, would be happy enough to let his bank take over management of those funds.”

His aide shot him a knowing look from dark, well-made-up eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not fool enough to think anyone would succeed half so well or work half so hard to take care of his income as you. And you won’t blab. Hand it to Wilkes and before you know it people will know that Sherlock Holmes has money, just like any other posh public school Oxbridge bastard—and that he’s got ordinary people to manage it for him.”

“And?” Mycroft refused to concede the point.

“And he’d lose that little bit of mystery, wouldn’t he?”

He sniffed. “Sherlock’s hardly mysterious.”

“Easy to say when you’ve helped change his nappies.” She studied him. “It’s part of the trouble between you, you know. You’re a compelling obstacle in his ongoing attempt to be a self-invented man.”

He gave her a bewildered look. “Of course he’s not self-invented. How could he be? It’s not like Mummy and Father and I haven’t known him since forever. And he does have a public record, much though we’ve muddled with it when Moriarty was in play. It’s not as though he sprang full-grown from the head of Jove, complete with Belstaff and scarf, after all.” His brow furrowed.

His aide smiled and mentally sighed. It was her superior’s one blind spot, she thought—his baby brother. At some point there was a disconnect between the two so severe that neither quite understood that they were speaking from competing fictions, each with some vital truths—and some equally vital idiotic errors. 

“What are we going to tell them about Bellamy,” she asked, determined not to waste time on a conceptual dead end.

“That it’s in the hands of Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” he said, as though that ought to conclude the matter.

In a rational world with neither Mycroft Holmes nor his brother Sherlock, it would have. This was not that world.

“He won’t accept it. He’ll go wallowing around investigating.”

He sniffed. “Ridiculous. He hasn’t got clearance.”

“And? Your point?”

“He couldn’t get access.”

She shot him a look dipped in acid and irony. “Sherlock…couldn’t get access.”

“Not if my people are doing their jobs properly.”

She let the silence blossom between them. At last he sighed. “All right. I concede, the last time he stole my access codes, and it was no fault of anyone’s but my own. Still…”

“He deduced your access codes, because you based them on your least favorite theatrical composer.”

“I’m sure most people choose their favorites,” he pointed out.

“You’re not most people—nor is Sherlock. He deduced it. And after all, it’s not as though your loathing of Stephen Sondheim is unknown.”

“Hardly a state secret.”

“It is if you use it as the mathematical basis for your access codes.”

“Mmmmm.” He gave a small, discontented little grumble, and looked out over the now-empty plaza. “It looks like it’s going to rain.”

“It does in London in January.” She glanced at her Blackberry. “Here they come, sir. What are you going to tell them?”

He cocked his head, and said, quietly, “I think…the truth.”

“He won’t believe it, and even if he does, he won’t care.”

“No,” Mycroft said, softly. “But his…friends will.”

She considered—and nodded. “It might work at that.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said—and tried not to flinch as the door of his office burst inward and his reckless brother barrelled in, trailed by his friends, John and Mary, and DIC Lestrade…ally to both brothers, depending…

He found his eyes trying to meet Lestrade’s, seeking the other man’s assessment of the situation. 

Grim, apparently. Lestrade shook his head, and his lips tightened in a way that suggested he was little happier with the situation than Sherlock was.

Sherlock was already whinging.

“Is it remotely possible you could allow the wheels of justice to actually turn, brother-mine? Or have you nothing better to do than insert your long nose into the machinery of law, bringing justice to a standstill?”

“Sherlock, you can’t be allowed to bring her in.”

“Her?”

“The killer. She’s in a position to reveal half our allies in the Middle-East. Names, addresses, family members… And she’d do it, if we gave her any room to do so. This has to be handled off the record and far, far away from the members of the fifth estate.”

Sherlock sniffed. “Protecting traitors?”

Mycroft’s jaw set. “It’s rather a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Protecting men and women who are already risking their lives to provide us with intelligence and support inside cultures in which we are often not welcome.”

“Betraying their own. Traitors.” Sherlock looked entirely too smug. “You’re the one who once suggested you don’t trust people who spy for money. How much less do you trust people who betray their own?”

Mycroft glowered. “Doesn’t it depend on what they consider ‘their own?’ I’m not likely to condemn Germans who smuggled Jews out of the country—or provided intel to take down Hitler. Why should I think the less of men and women who hold their understanding of Islam higher than they hold the nationalism or the terrorist inclinations of fundamentalist factions?”

“Oh, I see. They’re traitors when they do it to us, and heroes when they do it to our enemies.” Sherlock smirked. “We are, apparently, the ultimate frame of reference, then?”

“To ourselves? Yes,” Mycroft growled.

“How quaintly Victorian of you,” Sherlock drawled. “So—because the killer is likely to turn on your preferred-status traitors, she’s to be ‘handled’ privately, as an act of necessity?”

Mycroft refused to answer his brother, but instead turned to Mary. “She spent ten years in ops,” he said. “She administrated our Iranian contacts for half that time.”

Mary frowned. “Why’d she kill Al Farsi?”

“He’d learned she was playing both sides. Accepting pay from ISIS to inform on known operatives in Iraq. She hoped to silence him before we caught on.”

“When did you catch on?” John asked. 

“We’d known for two months,” Mycroft said.

Sherlock growled. “Oh—and you were going to move against her when? Where’s your respect for those allies of yours now? Or were you going to move at all?”

Mycroft’s temper snapped, and he rose up, dignity wrapped around him and authority shining bright. “If you must know we were managing a shell-game. Moving people without Bellamy knowing it. She was informing on petty criminals, double agents, even on some of ISIS own people. We hoped to get more use out of her.” His eyes narrowed and he frowned. “That’s a lost hope. Now the best we can do is try to salvage the safety of our good people, and cover her murder of Al Farsi, so ISIS doesn’t make the connection.”

Sherlock huffed. “So you want us to turn our backs on a killer, leave a cold case—and let you and yours play KGB hit squad intead?” He shook his head, curls shaking. “Sometimes I wonder what notion of ‘England’ you think you’re defending, brother-mine. What attrocities would you endure in the name of victory?”

“What injustices would you permit, in the name of justice?” Mycroft snapped. “You think your way is better?”

“My way is law.”

“Your way is game playing. You use deadly serious situations to disguise your own juvenile thrill-seeking.”

“You always did suggest I make myself useful,” Sherlock snapped back, furious. “You can’t say I haven’t given good value for my entertainment.”

“Some of us put duty before entertainment.”

“Really?” Sherock scoffed, then, striding angrily around the office, eyes never leaving his brother. “This—all this, for duty? Not a moment of fascination? Never the joy of putting it all together, seeing the picture form? Never a moment spent here because if you go out there,” his arm swept, and he pointed melodramatically out the office window, “out there with the goldfish, you’d die of boredom in a matter of weeks? Don’t play the sanctimonious saint with me, Mycroft. You’re no more in this for virtue alone than I am. You just lie better.”

Mycroft’s mouth opened, shut, opened again… Then, voice soft and shocked, he said, “Sherlock…do you really think…”

Sherlock growled, deep in his chest, his baritone rumbling down to basso profundo levels. “You. You. It’s like you and that damned umbrella. People think you carry it because ‘you worry constantly.’ Because you’re afraid. Because you take precautions. They never ask themselves if maybe it’s because you’re actually hoping for a rainy day.”

Mycroft’s eyes shut. “You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t believe you’re a martyr, Mycroft. Not completely. Not enough to justify the righteous posturing. You’re good at it. You love it. It fascinates you. It makes you feel like you’re worth something.” The twist in Sherlock’s voice suggested that any worth his brother could wring out of his career and his standing was, at best, a sorry excuse for some other, more worthy source of self-pride. He did not, however, deign to offer alternatives, only to imply that Mycroft was without any. 

Mycroft met his eyes—cold blue meeting hot, actinic blue like a welder’s flame. At last he shrugged. “You may be right—and, yet, for better or worse I serve. I serve, Sherlock. Day in, day out, reliable. I hold this place, I protect this nation—and I do it well. Are you really going to tell me your desire to out a petty little bitch of a murderess is more important than the desire to protect the lives of allies in a shadow war? Really?”

“I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury, said cunning old Fury, I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.” Sherlock’s voice spoke in rage, a kinked phrase at a time, twisting its way to the final word. “Watch what you’re turning into. Someday you may be the murderer I hunt.”

Mycroft drew a deep, shaken breath, then said, so softly the air seemed to shiver with it, “Fair enough. And the next time you’re the traitor my nation needs stopped?”

Sherlock stood in silent strength. Mycroft likewise. At last one slim hand flew up, and Sherlock said hoarsely, “Touche. I suppose it all goes to show that morals are all…relative. Aren’t they, brother-mine?”

Mycroft grimaced. “I’d be more inclined to agree if relatives could be counted on to all be moral,” he said, eying his brother acerbically. “Are you going to let this go, Sherlock?”

“Are you going to see justice done…Fury?”

Mycroft nodded. “She won’t go free.”

“I don’t know if I find that more reassuring—or terrifying,” Sherlock said, then gathered his team with his eyes. “Well. Done here. Chinese, anyone?” And then he was gone, with the lot trailing behind him like children skipping after the Pied Piper.

“Well,” Mycroft said. “That’s that taken care of. You’ll see to it, my dear?”

His aide nodded, but her eyes were disturbed. “Someday he’s going to turn on the nation, out of the mistaken belief it’s you he’ll hurt.”

Mycroft stared out the window. “Oh, he won’t be mistaken in that at all.”

“Yes,” she said. “He will. Because no matter how he hurts you, if he pushes it that far, he’s the one who’ll die of it.”

He stared and stared. Below Sherlock and John and Mary swept out across the plaza. Lestrade trailed behind, waving and cutting toward the bridge that ran over the river. The wind rose and tossed Sherlock’s Belstaff and Lestrade’s overcoat.

“Yes,” Mycroft said, voice cool and empty. “If he ever pushes that hard…yes. He will die.” He looked out across the city. “It’s started to rain,” he said.

She nodded. “Yes.” She went to the coat closet, and handed him his Crombie. “Here. Wrap up warm. And don’t forget your umbrella.”

“No more work for me today?” he asked, a gentle smile shining as he accepted the elegant coat. 

“You got the important stuff dealt with,” she said. “The team can manage the rest of it.”

“You’ll let me know when…”

“No. I won’t. Tomorrow morning is soon enough to know if we move on with the execution. Leave it to Lady Smallwood, Mr. Holmes. No matter what your brother suggests, you have’t become a sole tyrant. Let her carry this one.”

“But what should I do with myself, then?” he asked, teasing.

She laughed. “Go. Enjoy the rain,” she said. “Have dinner at the Diogenes. Make a friend.”

“I don’t do friends,” he said. “They’re a danger to a man like me.”

“It’s dangerous either way,” she said, and chased him out like a mother chasing a fractious child out for a bit of fresh air. 

He went down to the lobby, and out onto the plaza. He unfurled his umbrella, and smiled a small, private smile. He headed toward the bridge, not needing to plan the route from there to the Diogenes Club on Pall Mall. He moved easily, his long legs carrying him with awkward, giraffe-like grace across the pavement and out onto the pavement. 

He was halfway across the bridge when Lestrade fell into step beside him.

“You’re soaked,” Mycroft said, and automatically shifted the umbrella to partially cover each of them. “ON your way back to the Met, then, Lestrade?”

“Maybe. Thought I might just collect my things and head home. Look, keep the umbrella. I’m already wet through.”

“You should have called a cab. Or taken the Jaguar with Sherlock and his friends.”

“Figured you’d be out and walking this way eventually.”

“What made you think I wouldn’t call for a car myself?”

Lestrade paced beside him. “Because I watched your face, when you and Sherlock were fighting,” he said at last. “You do love rain.”

They walked together in silence, passing supporting post after supporting post. After a time, Mycroft said, “You are observant.”

“Yes. It’s why you both use me.”

“Mmmm. Tell me—was Sherlock right? Or me?”

Lestrade paced along, then said, quietly. “You were both wrong. But—you were a bit less wrong than he was, this time. And the poisoner? She was a lot more wrong. So…I can accept this compromise.”

“I see. Tell me, DCI Lestrade. If you see so clearly, if you can see how we’re all wrong, and how it’s all difficult…why do you stay on? Why do you work with us?”

The shorter man paced along beside Mycroft, hands in his pockets, overcoat dark with rain, hair dripping. After awhile he said, smiling. “Because I love the rain, too.”

Mycroft glanced over, and saw the drops fall from Lestrade’s chin and nose, and saw the wicked smile on his face. He laughed. “Not a one of us in it out of pure, altruistic motives alone, then?”

“Would you trust a man or woman who took our jobs hating them?”

Mycroft smiled, and folded his umbrella, letting his long fingers strip rain out of the furls as he twisted the folds shut. He looked up into the gray, spitting sky and felt the damp air, the drops on his face, the first spangled drop clinging to his eyelashes. He risked a smile at Lestrade. “No. No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “How would you like to go to the Diogenes with me, Inspector, and celebrate a lovely rainy day with some scotch and a hot dinner with me?”

Lestrade grinned back, and nodded, then returned to his steady stride over the bridge. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and they continued on together—two men who loved the storm

 


End file.
